


Irons

by orphan_account



Category: Top of the Lake
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 03:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation on the road home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storm_queen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_queen/gifts).



Tui didn't like the drive. Johnno didn't like it either, but he had the road in front of him to concentrate on, and he was used to peeling himself out of bed at odd hours. Tui getting folded into the car at half four for a seven-forty-five doctor's appointment seemed unfair even to him. She still had the nightmares. Kimmie had taken charge of Noah, of course, but Tui still got up for him in the middle of the night. Held him, Kimmie said, like a doll. Like she didn't know how to deal with him.

She didn't, and that was fine, and that was the worst thing.

Robin slept in the passenger's seat, Tui in the back under a blanket, and when they got to Dunedin it was Robin who walked Tui up to the hospital doors. They'd call when they were done, he might as well get himself breakfast. Johnno didn't want to know what sort of doctor they were seeing, why they needed a three-and-a-half hour drive, but he'd heard Robin on the phone with Kimmie once, reassuring her - she probably doesn't need surgery, Kimmie, it's all right.

Surgery for _what_ , he didn't want to think about.

He drove through the streets of Dunedin with the radio on low. Tui had a therapist in Queenstown. Had had, for a week, before Robin shot Al Parker. They'd arrested him. They'd arrested half of Queenstown, felt like. Half of the station in Laketop. Specials from Auckland coming in with clipboards. Kimmie wanted to move back to Auckland, Tui in tow, move in with her sister, but Tui had kicked and screamed. Tui was like her dad, she couldn't not get her way, she was streaked with fire inside and out, and she could charm, if she wanted to, but she was a kid and it was far more interesting to exploit the Mitcham fire. The Mitcham madness.

He wondered, sometimes, if he was a disappointment to Matt not because of the drugs or the loyalty to his mother but because he rarely raised his voice. Matt probably would have had a lot more respect for him if he'd fought his way out of the holding cell at Bang Kwang, if he'd run in his irons down the road and disappeared into the brush to browse and huddle like an animal. Matt liked when Tui did that, after all. Matt would have paid for his funeral if he'd died escaping from prison. Matt would have asked his mum for one of the little-kid tchotkes stuck up in her attic somewhere, the things Johnno made in primary school that Matt'd packed in a box and threw out into the road when Johnno left home. She wouldn't have given it to him, of course, and he'd have to limp home and wallow in lost opportunities. Luke and Mark would cross his sightline and he'd throw mugs at them, shouting, _out, out_. He'd collapse at the table, the one where Johnno used to do his math homework, and mourn for his loss.

He was aware of how pathetic he sounded. Matt was dead, devil take him, and Tui would have mandatory dates with a psychiatrist because of that, soon as they found her a psychiatrist wasn't disgusting. Matt was dead and he'd been out of Johnno's life for near a decade. Best to keep him out.

He found a corner store - not a café, he wouldn't set foot in a café again as long as he lived - and got  a box of mini chocolate donuts, the kind Tui liked. He got two coffees before realizing belatedly that Robin's would get too cold to drink. He stood in the street, blinking at his stupidity. His phone rang with a text, and he had to put the coffees on the roof of the car to check it.   _Done._

Robin collapsed against the passenger seat and drifted off before they came to the highway. It was raining and the sky was grey-black. Tui in the back sat up straight, eyes bright in the rearview mirror, eating her donuts. Far as Johnno could tell, she hadn't gone hungry hiding in the mountains, but her friends had brought her mostly things they could sneak out of their mums' cabinets. Spaghetti and tinned peas. Not many sweets.

"Want one?"

"No thanks," he said. Robin shifted under her blanket.

Tui ate another donut and caught his eye in the rearview mirror. "Why'd you come back?"

"From? To?"

"To Laketop," she said. She licked her fingers. "After you came out of prison."

He wondered what she knew about it. Why he was in prison. Tui had been three when he decided to go on his extended holiday Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand. He'd been doing heroin on the weekends, on and off, but Kimmie liked him so he was allowed to come by. He used to hold fat toddler Tui on his lap and tickle her til she shrieked. He'd sent her a Christmas present from Java, a cheap doll made by a local woman. "Kimmie gave me a job."

"At her store."

"Yes."

"But Mum said you had a law degree."

"I took a few correspondence courses." The books ordered from Australia mildewed in the wet heat of Bang Kwang. He tore out the white empty pages at the front and end for toilet paper. "I don't have a degree."

"Oh," she said, and was quiet. She pushed her cheek against the window. Johnno wanted to turn on the radio but Robin didn't look fit to wake. Her eyelids were fluttering. 

They drove another twenty kilometres before Tui said "What's prison like?"

White rice every day and whipworm to wash it down. Two years before Mum started sending him money - he bought antibiotics one week, meat the next. The three months of leg irons chafed him raw and he still had scars in a ring round both ankles. He used to scrub down cells for a rich man in exchange for stamp money. He wrote letters but they were more like diary entries and eventually he stopped sending them. There'd be weeks where he would lie in bed and look at the ceiling and blink at the fluorescent lights. Once he'd stolen a Harry Potter book from a Frenchman and read it over and over again for three days straight. He'd paid for it - the man had found out and his friends jumped at him and he'd pissed blood for a week.

Other things in the deep dark eight years of Bang Kwang, ringing wiith screams and the hum of the fluourescent lights, but he did not want to think about them. Bang Kwang had eaten - no, he had  _fed_ Bang Kwang eight years, and that was enough. 

Tui tapped on the back of his seat and he had to answer. "Wouldn't recommend it."

"Did you hate it?"

The words slipped out before he could catch them. "I'd rather kill myself than go back."

Silence. Johnno took a sweaty hand from the wheel and rubbed his forehead with the back of his palm.

Tui had her cheek against the window again. There'd been a paper lining in the donut box, she'd taken it out and had started folding and unfolding it. The crinkling peppered holes in Johnno's brain. Sounded like the constant march of insects up and down the bunks. He swallowed. "Why'd you want to know? Planning a visit?"

"Dad," she said.

"Fuck him," Johnno said, automatic, and in the mirror he could see Tui's smile flicker on and off. "Fuck him, Tui, all right. You're not going to jail for that."

She didn't look convinced. He hit his palm against the wheel. "Tui. Hey. Tui. That - that doesn't count, all right? He - "

"Tried to kill Noah," she said softly

"And - he did the other - " God  _damn_ it, Johnno, don't bring that up, but Tui didn't seem to notice. She crinkled the paper again. "Look, Tui, if anyone tries to take you to prison  _I'll_ kill them and they'll take me to prison instead. Sound good?"

She didn't say anything.

"And then Robin'll break me out and we'll all move to Australia. You, me, Noah, Robin, your mum. Sound good?"

She shrugged.

He worried, for a moment, that she'd start to cry, or that she'd ask him for details about Bang Kwang as some sort of preemptive strike - form a plan, Tui Mitcham would, get her ducks in a row so she could shoot them dead - but she undid her seatbelt so she could better lay down and pulled her phone out of her pocket. He heard the faint tik-tik-tik of the keys being pressed. Texting.

He thought of when Tui had been born. How irritated he'd been, and then his dad demanded he come to the hospital anyway, and he'd swaggered in to Kimmie's room and seen the little blackhaired doll that was the baby, and he'd felt awful, because his dad had another kid to fuck up and Laketop had another soul to swallow and she didn't deserve that, she didn't deserve any of it. She didn't deserve this now, baby and mysterious doctors' appointments in Dunedin and mandatory therapy and nightmares and hate and seven hours of driving on a Saturday.

"Johnno."

"Yeah."

Her face was lit up from the phone. "Thanks for the donuts."

"Welcome."

Donuts and ridiculous, cartoonish promises. Cheap dolls mailed from thousands of miles away. All he could offer her. He wasn't a good brother. "Any time."

 The rain let up before Laketop. Tui had gone back to sleep, and Robin was still passed out. He carried Tui out of the car and put her on the couch in Kimmie's tiny living room. Got back in the car and Robin yawned, plucked the full and cold coffee from the cupholder. "Can I have this?"

"Go on."

"Thank you," she said.

His phone chirped. Tui.  _thanks_

_no trouble. have a good weekend_

Pause. 

_thanks for telling me i wont' go to prison._

 He smiled despite himself. Donuts and ridiculous, cartoonish promises. Maybe that was enough.


End file.
